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• Trevor Smith
As launch costs decline, spacecraft design is shifting away from mass as the dominant constraint. The emerging trade space centers on surface area, forcing engineers and operators to reconsider how spacecraft are designed, packaged and optimized for increasingly accessible spaceflight.
Commercial Space
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As launch costs decline, spacecraft design is shifting away from mass as the dominant constraint. The emerging trade space centers on surface area, forcing engineers and operators to reconsider how spacecraft are designed, packaged and optimized for increasingly accessible spaceflight.
Reflect Orbital CEO Ben Nowack discusses how the company is addressing growing criticism from astronomers, who have raised concerns about the potential impact of its proposed orbital activities on night-sky observations and the broader astronomical community.
Intuitive Machines said Aug. 13 that it secured a $600 million contract from an undisclosed customer to provide three geostationary-orbit communications satellites. The award expands the company’s satellite business and represents a significant commercial program beyond its lunar exploration activities.
The push to build data centers is extending into lower Earth orbit, creating a potential new market for insurers. Orbital facilities would introduce unfamiliar exposure across launch, spacecraft operations, infrastructure resilience and the increasingly complex risk environment of commercial space.
Rocket Lab is emphasizing operational flexibility while Blue Origin advances plans for a two-pad launch architecture, as the commercial launch market faces unprecedented capacity constraints. The developments point to growing pressure on providers to expand infrastructure and adapt launch operations.
High activity
SpaceX has completed a reported $60 billion acquisition of AI coding startup Cursor, expanding Elon Musk’s competitive push against Anthropic and OpenAI. Separately, Alphabet’s investment in SpaceX has grown from $900 million in 2015 to an estimated $94 billion following the rocket company’s reported $86 billion IPO.
Novaspace projects that emerging in-orbit services will generate approximately $3 billion in cumulative service revenue over the next 10 years. The forecast points to an early-stage market focused on making space operations more flexible, resilient and sustainable, while the sector continues to develop commercial applications and capabilities.
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